Bend Around the Wind by Scyllaya

Chapter 10: Jack In

Chapter Ten

Jack In

Andromeda Orbit

'Priorities, does the word mean anything to you? Cause I was under the impression that a simple word like that wouldn't be too hard to understand!'

'It is you, who obviously has a problem with understanding what the most important task at hand is.'

'Argh, we need to figure out how the ship works!' Stark said, again, he just kept repeating himself.

'We have tried to move forward with it, we have been doing nothing but try. Now it is time to pay attention to other important matters.' Loki explained. Again. Stark was bull-headed and refused to listen and Loki was really at the end of his patience with him.

'Searching through the ship and the cargo is not an "important matter"!' the human replied. 'We are the only ones here and the fucking cargo won't go anywhere!'

'Yes, but if the cargo is something valuable, then there is a chance that the owner will be looking for it, so we need to be prepared,' Loki told him.

'I get that, but this is more important! Are you not understanding what I'm trying to tell you here?!" Stark was raising his voice now, clearly as frustrated as Loki felt.

'I do not see how more could be done,' Loki said firmly. 'Nor why I need to be here for it.'

'Because I don't understand the fucking language!' Stark snapped.

'I have already translated every single text that appeared on that wretched display, no matter what you did nothing new showed up!'

'And don't you see how that's a problem?' Stark asked and turned towards him fully. 'There's something missing, okay? The displays only show a fragment of information about the ship, nothing more! And no matter what I do I cannot get more out of the computer! And on top of it I cannot even do any real input! The displays are useless for any real data entry and nothing in this room is even remotely suitable for it either!'

'You could change our route just fine,' Loki argued. Stark pinched the bridge of his nose and took a few large breaths.

'Do you know what's going to happen if the autopilot or any of the systems need manual input and I have no idea how to do it? Hm?' Stark asked, his eyes were blazing angrily and his whole stance was tense and frustrated. 'I could change our route because the auto-pilot was already on and I only had to change the direction, but there have to be dozens of systems running and I can't access them. This is a ship, I need to be able to control it, because if I can't you can bet your ass that this lovely journey will end with a lot of falling, crashing and a big explosive fiery death.'

'Asking me to translate the same texts over and over again will not solve that problem,' Loki told him. They have been trying to access the main systems for hours now and the only thing that changed was that they became angrier as time passed.

'You know I'm really wondering what you would've done on your own, killing everyone who knew how to drive this thing before getting some information out of them.'

'We have only been trying for a few hours, I am sure it cannot be that hard,' Loki answered sternly.

'No, it can't be,' Stark agreed as he ran a hand through his hair. 'But this translation thing is making the process too slow, if I could read everything on my own I could work faster, but we don't have time for you to teach me this... whatever language.'

'I couldn't teach you if I wanted to, I do not speak it myself.' Stark frowned.

'But you're translating.'